Archiving Your Scholarly Publications

Remember copyright when uploading your articles to ResearchGate and other similar sites.

• You may not have copyright permission to post and/or share published works. Be familiar with the terms of the copyright agreement you signed with the publisher before you post or share anything.
• Generally, you may upload a pre-print version of your paper (without revisions made as the result of any editorial or peer-review process),  but not the final version published in a journal.  
• Review your agreement with the publisher for details.

Here are three resources to help you find and manage your copyrights:

• Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving:  Sherpa Romeo is a searchable online resource that provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis.
• Reserving Rights of Use in Works Submitted for Publication: Negotiating Publishing Agreements: Practical guidance on managing your copyright from the Copyright Management Center of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
• Keep your copyrights: Information from the Columbia Law School Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts

From SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

When you publish in a journal you are typically asked by the publisher to sign a transfer agreement, or contract, that describes which of your intellectual property rights you are assigning to the publisher. These agreements can deprive you of rights that you may not wish to forfeit, such as your right to post your article on the public Internet or to make copies for classroom use.

Resources to help you secure your rights

• The SPARC Author’s Addendum preserves rights for broader use of your research.
• If your research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, they offer language that modifies a publisher’s copyright agreement to give you the rights to follow their Public Access Policy. This policy requests deposit of articles resulting from research they have funded into their open access online repository.